swallows dart
around the wingtip
of the 747
the air hostess lectures
the tops of heads

Beside me is a true Italian Madonna: Rubens' or Caravaggio's. The boy-child blinks in the warm, mounded substance of her embrace, giggles, squirms under many smacking kisses, yields to her softness, rests in her softness.

She says, 'I love you, I love you,' over and over in his ear. His long black eyelashes blink. He is taking it for granted, as he should, the sacred wholeness of his mother's embrace.

a cross
in the cleavage
of hills
our plane's shadow
shadowing us